Video Transcript

Hey, this is Leo for Actualized.org, and here I’m going to attempt to explain all of religion in one video. One of the most fascinating questions that we encounter as human beings living this social existence and having this one life we live through, and we go through, and discover all this stuff about what life is — the existence of religions.

Not just one religion, but many, many, many religions. And it’s very fascinating how seriously people take their religions. How passionate they are about them. How they are willing to fight to the death to defend them and, also, how science plays into this and the whole history of religion.

So, in this video, I want to tackle this topic. It’s a pretty big topic to tackle, and it’s going to play out in a much different way than you probably think.

Let me preface by saying that this is my personal perspective, all right? This is my personal perspective from a lot of study that I’ve done. And I haven’t done study so much on religions, but I’ve done study on philosophy. And I’ve done study on personal development and, most recently, I’ve done a lot of study on consciousness. What is consciousness? And that led me to the study of enlightenment and what enlightenment is.

And all of this has very interesting ramifications for my understanding of religions. In fact, I just came back from an enlightenment workshop. I spent seven days immersed in a workshop. Mind-blowing, profound realizations that I’ve had.

I’m seeing reality differently now, from that workshop. And I’m seeing religion in a more clear light. At least in my opinion. And I wanted just to share some of my insights with you about religion, if you’re curious about this. For curiosity’s sake.

How It All Started

I used to be an atheist for pretty much most of my life. I remember debating some really religious friend that I had, in high school, and not understanding how someone could be so religions. He was a Christian, Protestant, I believe. I don’t exactly remember which denomination, but a really devout Christian.

And I couldn’t grasp it, because from scientific, rational perspective, religions don’t make a lot of sense. And yet, you’ve got so many people believing in religions. So, you start to wonder: How could this be? How could you have billions of people so bought into religion?

And, if religions are false, which is what the scientific perspective says about them — that they are just fairy tales, and stories and myths — then why are there so many similarities between different religions? And could religions have gotten such a strong foothold on culture and society? Very deep and perplexing questions that are not as easy to answer as you might think.

Now, I’m going to warn you that you’re not going to like what I have to say in this video if you’re rationally-minded. And I am rationally-minded too, but I’ve gone through a long journey of exploring lots of different stuff. And I’m extremely, extremely, extremely open-minded. So, this has helped me in my ability to investigate this stuff.

But what I find is that a lot of “rational people” are rational, but they are actually also very similar to religious people. Sometimes, very scientifically-minded, or rational, or even atheistic person will think they are 180 degrees away from religion.

But actually, what I’m going to suggest to you is that, if you are that type of person, you have a lot more in common with religious people than you’d like to admit. And we’ll get to that as we continue.

Also, even though I’m going to be saying some stuff here that your rational mind is not going to like, this video is not a defense of religion. And, in the end, what I’m going to tell you is that you should be dropping religious beliefs if you’ve got any.

So, let’s just start cracking into it. Another important caveat that I want to make here is that what I’m going to be telling you in this video is going to really strain your rational mind. But everything I tell you here will be empirical. I’m making empirical, factual, verifiable claims that I claim you can verify in your own direct experience. So, this is not going to be some mystical talk.

This is not going to be like most religious talk, which is just talk about stuff that you’re supposed to have faith in and believe on blind faith, and there’s nothing tangible that you can verify or not verify, prove or disprove. What I’m telling you here is going to be very provable, if you want it, if you want to prove it. It’s going to take a little bit of work, though.

Surpassing The Dogma

So, the core problem here, between this religion vs. science debate, is that human beings are extremely, extremely dogmatic. Dogmatic, that’s the key word here — dogmatic. What does dogmatic mean? Dogmatic doesn’t pertain to religions, or to science, or to any particular thing.

Dogmatic means that you cling to a particular world-view or belief. When you do this, you don’t tell yourself that you’re clinging to a world-view or to a belief. What you tell yourself is that you have the facts and that this is just a fact and it’s true. It doesn’t feel like you’re clinging to anything.

But, in fact, what you’re doing is you’re clinging. And this closes your mind down and doesn’t permit you to do a very exhaustive, open-minded search, right? So, the trick here is not only — are we dogmatic? — but we lie to ourselves about being dogmatic.

We don’t honestly tell ourselves that we’re dogmatic. We just behave dogmatically and we do this unconsciously. And we will defend, often to the death, our dogmatism. Deny that it’s dogmatism. So, this is not a problem of religion. This is a problem of the human psyche.

Because, when the human psyche takes on a core assumption or a belief, no matter what it is, whether it’s a religious one or something totally different, it doesn’t really matter — you cling to it, you make it a part of your self-identity. You make it a part of your self image. And when you do that, you identify with it and you feel like you need to defend it.

And that’s why having a discussion about religion at the dinner table will often turn into some heated debate or argument. Or people’s feelings get hurt. Because we don’t just treat this logically, intellectually, rationally. We treat these issues emotionally. They trigger us emotionally.

And don’t think that, just because you have a rational way of looking at the world, that you are not dogmatic. See, your rational way of looking at the world is still emotionally grounded. And it triggers just as easily in you, let’s say — a rational person, as it would in a religious, dogmatic, fanatical person. This is a very common mistake that I see atheists making.

They think that, just because they are an atheist, they are not dogmatic. Well, what I find in practice is that most atheists are actually very, very, very dogmatic. And this upsets them to hear because they like to use it as a separation between themselves and religious people. But, actually, you’re on the same side on that point.

The difference you have with religious people is that you have a different kind of dogmatism. What I’m going to suggest to you here, though, is that you’d be much better served to move away from dogmatism entirely. Because then you could see this whole debate from a much higher, elevated viewpoint. And you could get a lot of perspective and a lot of emotional release from giving up your dogmatism, but this is a tricky thing to do.

See, another problem here is that rational people see religion as foolish. Why? Well, because we go out into the world and, this is how I thought for most of my life: I’m here in life and I don’t see any supernatural phenomenon. I don’t see any gods, I don’t see any miracles, I don’t see Zeus throwing thunderbolts onto the Earth. I don’t see any supernatural stuff, so why would I assume that supernatural stuff exists?

And because of this fundamental incongruity, basically, religion looks like a hoax. Because religion is talking about supernatural deities, and beings, and miracles happening, and all this stuff. But then you look at real life and you’re like: “Dude, I mean, just get real. What are you talking about? This stuff is clearly not here. What are you smoking?”

Ideas Behind Religions

So, that’s one issue we’ve got here. But, really, you have to ask yourself: Why does religion exist? Not just one, but many, many religions? And these religions, it’s not like they are all totally random, different religions.

They seem to have a lot of common elements and threads between them. Even though superficially they might look very different, also, from a big-picture point of view, they all sound, and start to converge, and look very similar. So, why is this going on? A very interesting question.

You have to think about this question very open-mindedly, though. Because I see a lot of explanations that come to mind and, I’ve coped with these explanations myself when I was younger, and I’ve read books and heard other people talk about what the origins of religion might be. And I want to suggest that the following origins, that I’m going to list off, are not good explanations.

So, one explanation, you might think, well, religion is just primitive stupidity. Primitive cultures, thousands of years ago, they really didn’t understand life, they didn’t understand themselves, they didn’t understand how the mind works, or science. And so, they just were, basically, foolish and their primitive ideas somehow evolved into these organized religions.

I want to suggest to you that that’s not a really good explanation. Nor do I think that religion is merely a superstition that’s been formalized and codified. And don’t think that’s a really good explanation either. Nor do I think that tradition is a good explanation for what religion is and why it originated.

It’s not merely from tradition that these things arose. There seems to be a much stronger force at play there than just tradition. Because there’s a lot of different kind of tradition that we could have had that was not mystical, or religion-based, or god-based.

Nor do I think that this explanation of religion as a social, political, controlling mechanism is a satisfactory explanation. For example, some people would say that the reason religion exists is to control the masses. Especially in the old days, when the masses were really stupid and there was less social structures.

We didn’t even have countries, we had city-states and tribes. In this kind of environment, you basically needed some kind of abstract system of belief that would bring together and make cohesive a bunch of different people. Give them a sense of direction and purpose in life or whatever. Or maybe it was used by some ruler or king to control his people and you pacify his people against rebellion.

And while I think that that’s definitely been done in the past, that political leaders and religious leaders have used religion as a controlling mechanism for social engineering, and to profit themselves and other such things — to gain power, to maintain power over people — that certainly happened. But it doesn’t make sense that that was the origin of religion.

Nor does it make sense that religion is merely a collection of myths or fairy tales. This also doesn’t make sense. Because the myths and fairly tales, they could have been very random and very different than they ended up being. And it doesn’t quite explain what and why religion is. So, all of those things might be true to some degree, but they miss the core, they miss the core that’s there.

And the core that I want to tell you about right here, which I’ve been thinking about a lot this week, as I’ve been working really hard on my enlightenment and studying a lot of consciousness material — and this is the thing that you’re really, really not going to like, you’re not going to like this, your rational mind is not going to like this — is that there is an absolute truth and this absolute truth is accessible to human beings.

Again, there is an absolute truth and this absolute truth is accessible to human beings. And here’s the really nasty bit that you’re not going to like: it’s not accessible to the rational mind. It is not accessible to the rational mind. The scientific, rational mind, hates this. It hates this idea. This idea is not something it wants to accept.

So, what I submit to you is that, if your mind is rejecting this idea and it’s not even open to this possibility, than what you’re being is dogmatic. Here I just stated this, but I want to go and explain how this can be possible and why you’re missing this, why your rational mind is missing this. Because your rational mind is rejecting out of hand this idea that there could be something outside of the rational mind.

It seems silly, it seems superstitious, it seems mystical, it seems religious. And religious is a bad word. But I want to urge you to be a little bit more cautious and careful and open-minded here. Because I’m going to lay something on you that’s going to be pretty deep.

Here’s how it works. I’ll tell you exactly the structure, the core of religion. And my claim here is that this structure is actually true. This structure is actually true. So, here’s how it works.

The Sense Of Self

You’ve got a sense of self, of personal self. You believe that you are a body, and you believe that [you’re] this mind and the brain inside the body. And you’ve got this personal story: you can remember the time that you were born and the way that you grew up, and where you are now. And you believe that you’re going to die, and yada, yada, yada, right? And that all makes pretty good sense. Except there’s one problem.

And that problem is that, if you look really carefully and really deeply, what you’re going to realize is that this sense of self that you have is an illusion. And that there is no such thing as a sense of self. Thing that you call you, the thing that you think you are most certainly, when we say your name — the thing that points to — well, that thing is actually a big confusion and a big mistake in your mind.

So, what’s possible then is that it’s possible to, basically, jail-break your brain. You know how they jail-break cell phones, to break out of the crappy operating system, or whatever, install whatever software you want? Well, what’s empirically possible is to jail-break your brain. And you can jail-break the mind from the brain. Pretty cool.

In doing so, what you discover is that the self, the self that you believe that you are, everything you believe that you perceive, is actually not being perceived by a “you”. And this answers a very deep, existential question. And the existential question that it answers is that it answers who you really are. You believe, right now, that you’re this physical body.

Well, what I’m telling you is that’s false. That’s a false identification. Your identifying with your physical body in the same way that, maybe, a psychotic might identify with being a chair or a tree, or something. In the same way, you’re identifying with your body. It certainly feels very real, but it’s not true.

When you break through that illusion, and you find what’s true, you discover something that’s quite unfathomable and, literally, incommunicable. And that is that the self, the true self — not the false self — but the true self is nothing. And this nothing is a very special thing. This is not something to be dismissed lightly.

Nothing, here, I mean literally. You are literally nothingness. This cannot be believed or logically understood. It has to be directly experienced. You are the nothingness, so you are it. Once you realize it, you can actually be it. You can be the nothingness. So, the self is nothing. OK, so that’s step one.

The second step is to — and, by the, way, when you experience that, that’s called enlightenment, when you realize that, that’s called enlightenment — so, after you get your first enlightenment about yourself, then comes the next, even bigger enlightenment.

And that is, answering existentially: what is existence? Have you ever wondered about that? What the hell is existence? How can existence even exist? Ever wondered about that? What turns out is that you can have an enlightenment experience that will reveal to you the absolute nature of existence. And what that absolute nature is — is nothingness.

Existence and nothingness are the same. They arise out of each other. Or, more accurately, existence arises out of nothingness. And that nothingness doesn’t go away, it’s always there. This is referred to as the Void in certain Buddhist traditions or, maybe, Zen traditions. They call it the Void.

So, all of reality comes from nothingness. Now, this might seem like: “OK, that, kind of, maybe makes sense, or whatever.” But see, I’m telling you here to believe it or to take it on as a theory. I’m telling you that you can actually get a direct encounter with this truth.

The other enlightenment that you can have — there are multiple enlightenments that you can have — another enlightenment that you can have is that other people, others around you, everyone you see, are also nothing, also nothingness.

And what that means is that, because you’re nothing, and they’re nothing, that you and them are identical, the same, at an existential, metaphysical level. You’re identical. So, you can have that enlightenment experience. And then, ultimately, what you discover is: you piece all these things together and you get a direct experience of the absolute truth.

And the absolute truth is, basically, that existence arises out of nothing. This nothingness, this ultimate void, is God. The word “god” refers to this nothingness. Because it’s the source of everything, right? It’s not a personal god. It’s not a god with a beard.

It’s not a god as “him” or “her”, but it’s god in the sense that it’s the source of all reality. And this nothingness is a unity, it’s a One. And it has no space, it has no location, it has no distance, it has no size, because nothingness doesn’t have any of those qualities.

What we’re talking about here is not an idea of nothingness, which is something. But we’re talking about, literally, nothingness. And what you discover is that you are nothing, and God is nothing, and so, because of this — you are God.

That right there is the core of every major religion. All major religions are grounded in the truth of no-self. That’s what I like to call it, the truth of no-self. Christianity is founded on this, as is Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Zen, even Sufism and yogic practices in India and in the East.

All of these different religions are, really, different ways, very roundabout ways often, to explain what I just explained to you. Now, there’s an additional, really big wrinkle in this whole thing: what I explained to you is just like a vague, vague, vague, story. Still a story, not reality, about what reality is.

And so, just consider for a second — I know that what I said might sound crazy to you, or might sound very implausible, or whatever — but, just consider for a second that, if this mechanism that I explained is actually accurate and correct, it would certainly explain a whole hell of a lot about why religions are, and how they are, and how they came to be. Wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it explain a whole hell of a lot, if you looked at religions through this lens?

Different Approaches

Let’s take a look at it. But you have to take into consideration that this idea of no-self, this truth of no-self, as I call it, that this is something that has to be directly experienced. This is not something that can be spoken or logically analyzed.

Why? Because, when you think about nothingness, it’s already something. What is the one thing that you cannot intellectualize about? It’s nothingness. You can’t intellectualize nothingness, because when you’re intellectualizing, that’s something.

So, the problem here becomes that, if you want to get at the nothingness, you can’t do it through your conventional, practical, every-day logical thinking. You can’t do it through scientific thinking. You can’t do it through language. And, by the way, science is language.

Science is language. You cannot do science without language. So, because of this, you have to be open to a radical, new, third alternative of understanding reality. What do I mean by a “third alternative”? Well, you’ve got one alternative, which is – to conceptualize about it, right?

You can create a model of how reality works, and that’s what science loves to do, and that’s what we do with even non-scientific pursuits. We create models. Religion creates models, too. We create models in our everyday life. We create maps of reality and all this kind of stuff.

It helps, creating these models. So, you can create models and concepts, and you can think about reality. That’s one way to understand reality. A second way, arguably even better and more direct, is to actually experience it with your own senses. First-person experience. Who can doubt what they actually see?

When you look up in the sky, and you see the sun or the moon, it’s really hard to doubt that thing exists, ’cause you see it right there before your eyes. So, experience is really nice, and one of the crowning achievements of science is that, what it did is that it founded its models on experience. Science is great because you actually get to look at what’s there: reality, experience.

And that you get to create a model. But that model, it’s not just some, any model that you want to create — otherwise, that would be a fairy tale — it’s actually a model that’s pinned down by experience, right? So, it’s limited, it’s constrained. There’s a verifiability built into it. So that’s really cool.

And then what we do is we say, well, that’s pretty much all we’ve got, right? You’ve got experience and you got your conceptualizing of experience. That’s how we know stuff and that’s the end of the story, right? Well, what if it wasn’t?

The Third Way

What if there was a third way to know stuff? What would that way be, you might ask? Well, what if you could actually be the thing itself? Think about this. So, for example, when you’re looking at my hand right now, you’re seeing it, right?

Now, the question is — you’re looking at it and you see it and it looks like a hand to you — now, the question is: to the hand itself, to the hand, what does the hand actually appear like? Does it appear the way it appears to you? Does it have colors and stuff? Or does it actually have its own being which is different than the way it appears to you?

You’re probably going to say: “Yeah, sure it does, Leo, but what are you trying to say? That I can be this hand? I can I be the hand, it doesn’t make much sense?” Well, this is where the truth of no-self becomes very important.

Because, the problem is that, when you’re identified with yourself, and you believe that you are this right here, this body, this mind, and these thoughts, then you’re stuck. And you can only be this, you can’t be anything else.

Now, though, if you jail-break your brain, if you really dis-identify from everything in your experience, including your body, and your thoughts, and everything else, this gives you the freedom to be everything and anything.

I’m not saying this figuratively, I’m saying it quite literally. So, this sounds pretty crazy, and it sounds like, well, some sort of myth or something like that. But what I’m saying here’s that you can actually do this in your own experience. It’s not a myth, you don’t need to go read a Bible, or whatever, to do this. It can be done.

Now, the trick, though, is that it’s difficult to do this. It’s not quite easy. And why is that? Well, because you’re extremely attached to your self, to your self-hood, to your self-image. And so, this process of jail-breaking your mind from the brain, this is a very serious physiological undertaking.

This does not happen easily, because everything in your psyche resists. It in the same way that, when you try to hack an iPhone, or whatever, the software in the iPhone resists you hacking it, right? But there are hackers who are good enough to hack it. And then, what they can do is that, they can do some remarkable stuff when they rid of those limits that the original phone manufacturers put on the damn thing. All those limits can be overcome.

So, it’s kind of the same with your mind and your brain. The problem here, though, is that human beings think extremely dogmatically. Remember the original, core problem we talked about at the beginning? Human beings are extremely dogmatic.

Well, if this truth of no self is communicated to other people — because you can’t communicate it, right?, you can’t communicate being, being something, you have to be it, you can’t communicate about it, anything you communicate about it is just more story
— so the only way to get and use this third alternative of being is to actually do the being yourself.

See, the problem is that it’s so difficult to actually jail-break your own mind. When you talk about these things to other people, what they do is they construct stories, and they turn this stuff into belief systems, right? And then, those beliefs, they turn into myths.

And a lot of times, the way that people talk about these things is true analogy, because that’s the only way you can talk about it. You can’t talk about it directly. To talk about it directly would be to be the damn thing yourself.

But, see, I can’t make you be it. You have to do it yourself. So, this creates a really big problem, because other forms of human knowledge can be easily spread. For example, if you want to write about mathematics, you can write some formulas in a book, and you can explain everything, and then you can print a million copies of this book, and send it around the world, and create classrooms full of calculus books, or whatever, that will teach calculus . And problem solved.

Now, how do you communicate the truth of no-self? Well, you can write it in a book. But the problem is that the person reading that book, just by reading that, that doesn’t jail-break his mind. So, he still believes he’s the self. And he’s so dogmatic he doesn’t understand he’s dogmatic. So, what he does is: he conflates reality with a belief system. And he thinks that just believing it is enough.

So, he reads the book, he reads about no-self, he reads about some god-idea, or nothingness, or whatever, and then he turns it into a belief. And so, the only way that you can mass-spread the truth of no-self is by turning it into a belief system — which makes it necessarily false.

You can turn it into a myth. If you want to stay true to the truth of no-self, the only way to do that is through silence. You can’t say anything. So, this presents a really big problem because it turns out, then, that you can’t mass-distribute the truth of no-self. This is one of the few truths that cannot be mass-distributed, unlike most of science and all the other stuff we know.

This should start to be clicking in your mind. You should start to get this “oooh”, “ahaaa”, right? As all the things you know about religion start clicking into place when you start looking at it through this lens that I’m sharing with you. Let me just continue a little bit more.

Historical Perspective

Now, think back two thousand years ago what life was like. Or maybe even five thousand years ago. Back then, our understanding of science and scientific principles, and sound philosophical reasoning processes, was non-existent. Human beings at that point did not develop good, practical, analytical thinking skills. So, there was not a really good scientific way, very careful, methodical way to explain what I’m explaining to you now.

In fact, human beings weren’t really clear about all the trickiness that the psyche presents. The whole idea of a psyche or a subconscious mind, these ideas, they are just a couple of hundred years old, a couple of hundred. Think how it was like to live life two or five thousand years ago.

It’s like you were living in the dark. You were living in a totally different reality. You did not understand reality the way we understand it now, through science. And so, therefore, people resorted to mythology, and story-telling, to talk about this truth of no-self. Now, how did this work in practice? Well, you have some extremely, really fucking hard-core guys, maybe one in a million, or out of ten million, that will breakthrough and see the truth of no-self by jail-breaking their mind.

These were the mystics, these were the yogis. These were the Jesus Christs and the Buddhas. These were the sages, these were the swamis. There are so many different names for these kinds of people, right? These were the Zen masters, before there even were the Zen masters.

You got to figure that this is how it happened. And then what happened is, when they break through this and they see this amazing, mind-blowing shift and perspective on life, what they do, of course, is that, well, some of them remain silent and say nothing.

But some of them want to share with others, because it’s like: “Oh, my god, you’re living in a fucking dream. You’re living in a fucking dream, you’re mistaken about how your whole life works and you don’t even know it. You don’t even have a suspicion, not even an inkling. And if I’m the yogi here, and I’m sitting and I’m looking at you, and I’m like: It’s just preposterous. It’s preposterous. I’ve broken out of the matrix. I want to help some other people break out of the matrix.”

And so, what I do, is I try to explain it to you in the way that I can. But again, I can’t explain it directly. I need you to experience it. But the problem is that it’s pretty difficult for you to jail-break your own mind. And you know, five thousand years ago, two thousand years ago, the process of jail-breaking your mind and achieving an enlightenment experience, was not well-studied, was not well-known, and it really was just kind of, like, something that happened almost by blind luck.

So, there was no reliable process to give to others for having them achieve enlightenments of their own, and see the truth for themselves. So, all that you could do is — you could tell stories. And so that’s what people did, they told stories.

And as they told these stories, this idea of no-self was explained and tailored to the local culture. Because the way that we understand the truth of no-self here, in the West, in America, let’s say, might be one way. And if you tell it in a some sort of cloaked and veiled Indian culture way, then we are not going to be receptive to it. So, it has to be told in an American way.

And if we tell it in Europe, it has to be told in a European way, and if we tell it in the Middle East, it has to be told in a Middle-eastern way, and if we tell it in India, it will be told in an Indian way, and in Africa it will be told in an African way, and so on.

The Sugar Coating

So, what you have here is that you have the same truth, but it’s tailored to the culture and to the era and the time in which this truth is discovered. Now, the truth is absolute, but every culture is different, right?

Every culture has stuff that it likes, it doesn’t like, and dogmatic and close-minded people, they are not very tolerant people. So, if you want to explain this stuff to them, you have to really tailor it in such a way that their mind, their limited mind will find it palatable. Palatable, right? It’s like giving someone a pill that tastes bitter, but to make them swallow, you have to coat it in sugar. Sugar-coating the pill.

So, in a sense, that’s what religion tries to do. And also, in a sense, no matter what explanation you give of no self, it doesn’t really matter because every explanation is wrong. It’s not like there’s one right explanation. The only right explanation is to actually have the person become the truth themselves and get it for themselves. Everything else is already wrong.

So, in a sense, you could say that every twist and turn that religion has put on it is just like a teaching mechanism. It’s just a tool. Now, the question is: are you going to be receptive to this tool, is it going to help you achieve enlightenment for yourself, or won’t it? Maybe it will get you lost in stories, and ideas, and looking somewhere where you’ll never find enlightenment.

And what will end up happening, very ironically, actually, is that most of religions devolved into exactly this. You just had people talking and talking about this stuff, and believing it, and creating dogmas around it, fighting over it, and all this psychologically getting invested in it without realizing what the hard-core mystics were really talking about.

If you go and actually study every major religion what you discover is that there is a hard-core mystical strand, it’s called — esoteric. The esoteric strand within every religion. It exists. You’ll find it in Christianity, you’ll find it in Judaism, with Kabbalah, you’ll find it in Islam, with Sufis, you’ll find it in Hinduism, you’ll find it with yoga and all this stuff. You find the hard-core mystics.

Those are actually the people who are living religion in the true way. But the problem is that they seem very radical, they seem very anti-mainstream and that is, of course, how it has to be. Because the truth of no-self is very radical and it’s very mainstream. You can’t mainstream it by definition. It’s completely individual. It makes the spread of religion impossible, it really does.

So, you have these hard-core mystic, esoteric splinter groups. Very tiny, little, niche splinter groups within every religion. And usually, what happens is that they are marginalized, those people are demonized, they are killed, they are driven into caves and into the woods and all this stuff. Because there’s no way that they can compete with the hyped up bullshit that’s generated when you take the truth of no-self and you spin a bunch of crazy, mind-blowing stories about it.

And you give it to the dogmatic mind. The dogmatic mind cannot understand no-self, but it can very easily take no-self, spin some tales about it and then understand those. And latch on and cling to those. Which is exactly what religions do. So, that’s basically how it works, in my mind. When I look at religions, it’s very clear to me through this lens how it looks.

The closer you get yourself to enlightenment, the more your awareness is raised about some of these issues, with self-image, and self-concept, and jail-breaking your mind, and how nothingness really works. That nothingness can’t be somethingness. That you can’t perceive nothingness because the perception of nothingness would be something and not nothing.

When you start to learn about the problems with conceptualization and the fact that, to think about something, you have to use a language system to think about it, and that language systems inherent biases and problems and challenges. When you start to look at this stuff, you start to se from a very, very clear perspective: “Oooh, of course! Of course there are these religions! Of course they work the way they work! Of course people buy into them!” Of course.

And the reason you say “of course” is because you recognize in yourself that dogmatism, that dogmatism that a fanatical, religious person has. That dogmatism is in you, it’s in you, you just deny it. Maybe you hide it a little bit better than that person. Maybe you don’t take it to some really far-fetched extreme. Maybe you don’t act on it as much, but it’s still there in you. And the way you can recognize it is just by actually feeling it, right?

You can feel that dogmatism when someone starts disturbing your world-view or your beliefs, maybe with a video like this one. What starts to happen is that you actually experience emotions, strong emotions.

Distaste, fear, anger, bitterness, feelings of discomfort, demonizing of the other person, burning the person at the stake, or whatever. Creating a straw man argument out of what they are saying. Closing your ears. Clicking the “off” button. Telling your friends how stupid the idea was that you heard. Or writing a nasty comment. Or whatever means you use to protect your world-view.

You notice inside, though, that this is a like a dirty feeling. Sometimes, it’s hard to pinpoint it, but if you’re very self-honest, you can say: “yup, there it is, there’s that dirty feeling inside me.” It’s inside you.

Atheism

In wrapping this up, one thing that I want to address in atheism. You might ask: well, Leo, what about atheism? Is atheism wrong? Is it false? Is it true? What’s going on? Well, in a sense it’s like the atheist is half-right. Because, what does the atheist say? The atheist says there’s no God. Well, the religious, the true religious person, what he wants to say is: there is a God, but this God is nothingness. So, in a sense, the atheist and the true mystic agree.

Because it’s like: there is no God, but the fact that there is a nothingness becomes the God. See, nothingness, it’s seems like nothingness is nothingness. So it’s pointless and shallow and hollow, and there’s not much meaning there.

But actually, this is a profound, absolute, existential nothingness. It’s hard to appreciate how powerful this nothingness is, because this nothingness is the source of all life. It’s the source of all reality. So, because it’s so profound, and because it’s so awe-inspiring, people call it God.

Now, the atheist could say, well, there is no God. But see, if you take that atheist and you actually give him an enlightenment experience for real, and you get him to feel directly, to be the nothingness, he is going to have a real difference of opinion. A real difference of attitude. A real difference of perspective. Things are really going to change for him. And it’s not going to be a typical kind of atheism that you see people talking about.

So, what about science? Is science wrong? Well, science is great, and with science we can build a lot of cool stuff, and technology, and whatever, and we can learn about electrons and protons, and all sorts of cool shit. But there’s a really big problem at he core of science.

Yes, science is very practical, but there’s a real big, core problem. And that’s the matter-qualia problem. And this is a problem that science has never addressed, it’s a problem that, really, science skirts all the time. And my current understanding is that science will never ever — ever be able to rectify this problem.

Here’s the problem. The science says that there’s physical matter and that there’s a physical world. And that sounds all great, you know? We got protons, and electrons, and quarks, and strings, and all this energy, and whatever other physical things you want to talk about. But, science has nothing about our perceptions.

So, the things that you are considering most real in your life: your feelings, your emotions, the colors that you see, the smells that you smell, the tastes and the sounds, and the qualitative aspects of all that — those things are not atoms, or energy, or strings, or quarks, or molecules, or anything else like that.

If we cut-open your brain, we are not going to find the color orange in there. If we cut-open your brain, we are not going to find the feeling of love or happiness in there. And if we cut-open your brain, we are not going to find the sound of a guitar in there. And yet, these entities, these experiential entities are very, very real to us.

The thing that science does with this problem is that is really skirts it under the rug, doesn’t like to look at it. Sometimes, it will deny the existence of qualia altogether. Or sometimes, it will come up with some ham-fisted way of taking matter and qualia, and somehow combining them together and explaining something away. But in the end, it doesn’t really resolve this issue.

Now, maybe I’m wrong on this. Maybe, in a thousand years, science will resolve this issue. But from where I stand now, and from what I understand about enlightenment, is that you’re not going to be able to resolve this issue. If you want to resolve this issue, what you have to do is to become enlightened. And then, the issue resolves completely, like that.

So, the resolution of the issue is enlightenment. But then, what that does is that it really throws science on its head. Really starts you questioning some core assumptions that science makes, right? So, really quickly I want to go through and explain a couple of key terms and concepts that religions rely on pretty heavily. I want to tell you exactly what they mean in no-bullshit terms.

The Key Concepts

So, the first one is: what is God? God is absolute nothingness. It’s absolute, you can encounter it, you can be it, you actually are it, you just don’t realize it yet, because you’re identified with your body. That’s God. God is not some bearded man in the clouds, or wherever the fuck your religions tell you he is.

Number two: heaven and hell. What does this mean? Is there a natural heaven and hell? No. Hell is where you presently live, hell refers to your current existence of being stuck and identified with your body. That is, literally, hell. Because you suffer for it every single day. You can’t avoid the suffering, because you live with a body that’s going to die, so there’s going to be suffering.

Heaven is the dis-identification of your self and your body, and becoming absolute nothingness. You know what’s cool about being absolutely no one, and nothing? It’s that nothing can harm you. And nothingness, it exists absolutely all the time, forever. So, there’s no worry about your death or whatever other problem is happening to you. So, this makes you untouchable. And that is heaven.

The next idea is faith. What does faith mean? Well, faith is actually — this is a very interesting realization I just had last week, from this workshop that I did — what faith is, is your ability to open your mind up to the third possibility.

So, we have concepts, and we have experience, the third possibility is being. The third possibility, of being. Well, this is something that’s very hard for the rational mind to open itself up to. And what I’ve literally found in myself is that I have to have faith in it.

Now, this sounds like a dirty word to you if you’re a rational person. Like: Faith, no, I don’t want to have faith, Leo, that’s for stupid people. And I agree with you, except that in this case, if you actually want to have an enlightenment experience, you are going to need faith. You are not going to do it without faith.

And so, it’s like: is faith really that scary? Are you so dogmatic that you’re going to be clinging to this idea of never having faith in the third option. And, therefore, never experiencing the third option?

Or, you can have the faith to take that leap of faith and try to go for the direct experience. And actually get the direct experience. Actually be the thing and then see what I’m talking about for real, for you. So, faith is important there.

Next term is good and evil. What do these things mean? These are not absolute terms. These are relative terms. These are metaphorical terms. So, what is evil, first of all? Evil is selfishness, evil is that identification with your body and all the actions that you do to live and perpetuate you ego. That’s evil. That’s literally what evil refers to.

Also, the devil, we should bring the devil in here, too. What does the devil refer to? The devil refers to you. The way that you’re presently living your egoic life. So, you are the devil, right? Because you’re tricking yourself. The devil is deception. You’re deceiving yourself about being this body and this mind here, which is just not true.

And then, what is good? Good is everything you do from a selfless state. Good is when you become God, when you see that you’re nothingness. And therefore, you also see that you’re everything. And you start behaving in a good way. Why? Because, when you see that everything is you, you want to treat it well.

The reason you treat other people, or even physical objects, poorly, the reason you litter, the reason you steal something, the reason you lie or deceive is because you believe that: Well, I’m here, I need to protect this, and that thing over there is not important, screw that. So, you do something to improve this at the expense of that. Well, if you literally believe that you’re everything, you don’t want to hurt anything at the expense of anything else. And then you’re good.

How about afterlife? What does afterlife mean? Well, afterlife means understanding the absolute truth of nothingness, because when you understand the absolute truth of nothingness, then you are in the afterlife already. Why? Because you can’t be destroyed, you’re untouchable. Nothingness lasts forever.

And, lastly, what does salvation mean? Salvation means being saved from your wicked state. So, metaphorically speaking, if we say that you’re the devil right now, then what I could do, if I’m enlightened or whatever, is that I can communicate this truth of enlightenment to you, sort of. Maybe within you, something will recognize a spark of truth here and you’ll come towards the light.

And you’ll try to go for the enlightenment experience. Maybe you’ll have some faith and you’ll open up yourself to the third possibility, and you’ll have a direct experience. And then you will become good from evil. And that will be a true salvation. A remarkable rebirth. I’m being very poetic and metaphorical here.

But that’s exactly what the Bible is. It’s a very loose, very, very, very, very, very loose, very, very, very metaphorical, very. Very, very, very poetic way of describing some of the stuff that I’ve been talking about here.

And just a couple of last points, to wrap up, is that everything I said here can be directly experienced for you. So, the reason why I’m telling you here is not religion. What I’m telling you here: I invite you to go and realize in your own life. You can verify it, right? I’m making a verifiable claim. A verifiable claim.

And, of course, the irony of all of this, is that religion is really a terrible way to get to know God. The people who are the most religious are the furthest away from God. That’s the whole irony of this thing.

But, of course, that means that, if you just become atheistic, like the typical dogmatic atheist. That also puts you far away from God. So, if you really want to understand this stuff, and you want to be one with God, and you are God, then what you can do — because you’re nothingness — is that you can attempt to attain an enlightenment experience or two.

And then, in that process, you will become religious, but in a non-religious way. In a very non-dogmatic way. You are not going to hold a single belief. You’re not going to need to have any theory. You’re not going to need to partake in any ritual. You’re not going to need to pray, or to meditate or to do anything at all.

Because your absolute nature is nothingness. And that absolute nature is the same forever. And always. And it has no place, it has no space, it has no time boundaries, it has no problems whatsoever. And it’s the most beautiful truth that you can discover in this life.

What I really recommend here, even though it sounds like I’m here promoting religion or whatever, hopefully you can see that this video is very nuanced. I didn’t take any sides here. I really carved out a new space a new space for you.

Hopefully, this space looks cool and appealing, and you want to go and try to experience a bit of it for yourself, taste a bit of it for yourself. What I recommend for you is that, if you are a religious person, and if you do hold a single religious belief of any kind, that you drop all of your religious beliefs.

Because every belief that you have, religious ones or scientific ones, or whatever other kind you’ve got, all of these are holding you back from realizing your true nature. And now, hopefully, you can appreciate why true mystics are so rare. Because it’s extremely, extremely, extremely difficult to let go of all the beliefs that must be let go of in order to realize this truth. It’s really a scary fucking business. It’s a scary fucking business.

It’s not an easy business. This is going to be one of the most difficult and emotionally grueling and challenging endeavors that you will undertake in your life, and it might take you many, many, many years and much, much, much struggle to do it. And you might even invest all that time and energy and you might fail. So, yeah, some good news for you there. All end on a happy note.

The Wrap Up

Alright, this is Leo, I’m signing off. Post me your comments down below. Click the like button, please. Share the video with a friend. And, finally, come sign up to my newsletter right here at Actualized.org. It’s a free newsletter, I release new videos every single week on, oh man, all sorts of personal development topics, from very abstract ones to very esoteric ones, to very practical ones.

So, if you’re interesting in really getting a really deep and profound understanding of life, and your own psychology, and use it to create amazing performance in your own life, which what all I’m about — amazing performance in my own life, then come sign up and check that out. Stay tuned for more.

Hi Leo, greetings from Croatia
amazing how so many different people around the world experiencing all this same but again individual insights about the ” the self ”
not an easy process for sure. been there
anyway, thank you sharing, happy to listen someone else’s personal enlighthentment experiences.

Well done Leo. You are very very intelegant and truly open minded. I think if you can believe in us being nothing and god being nothing, nothing being everlasting and forever. I replaced the word nothing with the word spirit. Not some bearded man in the clouds, but a powerful all knowing super smart and super powerful and super good spirit. Where in has made this physical world for us for a reason. In actually we don’t exist as we think, we are spirit that god made. Question is Leo, can your remove dogma and say yes there is possibility that the nothing you are referring to is a spirit? So me and you agree on what you are saying, perfectly said with the exception of one word. Amazing work as usual, keep up the amazing job.

and also I was raised in strongly catholic environment, literally church every sunday until I was 20 years old. But anyway, I have reached my enlightenment, now I am 35, and all started I remember with questions that I had when I was 5 or 6 years old, was in the church and listening to the priest every time about secrets of life etc. I was questioning everything by using my own mentality, applying logic and unconsciously “laws of nature” itself. So I guess I was blessed, the all journey IS absolutely amazing and unexplainable beyond every word known to human mind. you can never finish your “puzzle” picture
endlesly drifting as I like to say
it turns out my religion helped me to achieve these insights cause first like you said I have always felted “goodness” in my heart and second I am seeing myself in others since I have memory on “my” consciousness in this life. and it helped me in every every detail, sign or situation in realizing (real eyes )that we are actually ONE or Nothingness like you’ve been experienced it.

The men behind the creation of religions have done so to manipulate the masses. WE have the internal power and the numbers too by the way. These men are still steeped in shadow but the veils are down now for everyone to see. As the masses awaken from this massive hypnosis and control, they will react.

Don’t be caught up by those thought.
what’s inside of you, you will see it around you.
even though, that too is the part of enlightenment process
everything is necessary and all with the reason. Nothing is happening by the chance…How can one recognize itself without the effect of “mirror” ? It is through
self-reflection that one can achieve “selfrealization” and its applicable on all life forms. Meaning your every thought, beliefs, situations, and environment is your mirror and it guides you on your personal journey to the evolution of consciousness.

Leo, welcome to my world. I am not being a wise ass. In 1984/5 during a meditation I experienced nothingness. Since then I have been on a constant deconstruction of my dogmatic (your word) self. In the process I have been living the life the average person does and my evolution has been on-going. Your presentation accentuated the struggles and realizations I’ve encountered. The realizations far outweighed struggles. My life has been devoted to greater understanding of nothingness. Your presentation addresses the difficulties of sharing this realization with the religious. So, rather than trying to convince anyone of nothingness I just be and make my points when others display an openness. I have learned everyone is on the path but at much different levels and you must allow for their growth at their rate not yours. Thank you I have become a regular and look forward to your presentations.

This is correct, consider Genesis, and the tales of Creation on the holy bible Adam and Eve didn’t had any issues of self esteem or fear just until they ate of the forbidden fruit and by the serpent:
“Your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
knowing good and evil, is a part of the psyche.

Your video arrived at the exactly right time to the minute of me asking questions about life. I am open to believing and your insight has excited me in so many ways. I am on this journey, just at a different point. Thank you for sharing and guiding me. You are doing good for sure

Hi Leo, Like your approach and your slow change of direction towards the meta physical world. It’s defiantly a world filled with lots of deep topics and it’s a world I feel very attracted to myself. Anyway I want to ask you if you’re exploring/studying the areas within the humans seven chakras? If so, Do you have any thoughts or plans of shooting some videos related to that subject? Just curious

Hi Leo again But can you also use your chakras as a pathway to get enlightened by open them all from the lower ones and up? And wouldn’t it also be good for your mental/physic health to have your chakras fully open and have a very good flow of energy flowing around your body?

The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things. Freed from desire, you can see the hidden mystery. Lost in desire, you see only what is visibly real. Yet mystery and visible reality flow from the same source. And the mystery itself is the doorway to all understanding.

Your explanation is about the closest I’ve ever experienced to saying what cannot be fathomed in words. Connection to the source can only be pointed to in language.

Literally last night, my boyfriend and I were speaking more in depth then ever before, on his beliefs on or lack of beliefs in God, etc. I have for the past 2 years been on a path to self actualization, and really a study of self, which has become more metaphysical almost right away and now can be understood to have also been a journey of an actualization period of all things, looking within has allowed me to understand more about it all, at the same time, and there is no separation, and unfortunately a lack of words, and capability to convey and communicate what it is I think, feel, and have come to know about it, such a weird unfamiliar place to be, yet feels like the only truth I now know. I met him at a time in my life when I have never loved myself more. And so, I am experiencing a love between us, for me, that is unlike that of any other relationship I have ever had.
He has tried a lot, I believe in his past with a complete open mind and heart to try with faith just believing in something he wishes he could, like, true love for example, or belief in God and or an afterlife etc. and his mind as he conveys is just not able to rationalize it, understand or believe it. He hasn’t experienced it and so he cant allow it to be true until then, and or it is scientifically proven in some way, or prof is found supporting it. I on the other hand have no problem with faith, and I try to hold fact to nothing which discredits everything but doesn’t support anything either. Everything is consistently evolving and changing and what is true today will be disproved tomorrow, and so I hold nothing to be true, and rely a lot on deciding what I want and creating the feelings and thoughts to get that which I desire, and use the mind or try to as a tool, and being aware of its distractions and chatter. Just recently feel like though I’m not sure now of what I want because its this back and forth of what now… And importance of things and no right and wrong, better or worst, what is it then that I really want? It gets all weightless, like none of it is important. And then so what is important to me? What am I living for? Is it really taking me back to the beginning, which is it is all just for nothingness to have experience? If so, then what is it I want to experience?
This video came exactly at the right time, I will enjoy to send it to my boyfriend, I hope it will shed light to him, as it is coming from a person with I think similar views before having an awakened experience. My boyfriend having atheistic views, however I think really wanting to be able to experience something to associate a greater understanding and or connection to source…

Please if possible delete my post! I should never use voice command without checking the clarity of my writing before I press submit! It is so all over the place that it’s ramble is distracting, and even I’m dumber having re-read it haha

Hey Leo! Great video. I wanted to share something with you and your audience related to the notion of faith. I saw a video where a disciple asked his guru to show him God. In a nutshell, the guru asked the disciple to tell him what he sees. The disciple says “I don’t see anything.” The guru said that is because the disciple doubts. The “don’t” in his statement is doubt. The guru told the disciple to remove doubt… For those who want to see God and have the desire and urge to do so, this video can create a profound experience… perhaps not enlightenment, but it can shed a lot of light. It did so for me and my colleague. If you want to know what happens, I invite you to go to mooji.satsangs.net, scroll down to “Tribute to Papaji” and click on “P41 – Show Me God”. I would love to know your toughts and experience.

Great presentation, Leo! I see only one gap/missing, and it’s an important one. I suggest you read the books by Michael Newton (“Journey of Souls”, “Destiny of Souls”, “Memories of the Afterlife, Life Between Lives: Hypnotherapy for Spiritual Regression”). MN was an atheist until he accidentally regressed a subject under hypnosis through and beyond a past life death scene and into the nonphysical Spirit Realm. MN was so blown away by what his subject reported to him under deep hypnosis that he focused the rest of his life and career on Life Between Live (LBL) regressions. He regressed over 7,000 human beings and assembled a mind blowing, compellingly consistent picture of what the nonphysical (“light/energy”) side of our individuated consciousness is all about and including very detailed information describing our existence between physical incarnations. Leo, if you have not exposed your “open mind” to MN’s information, you are in for a truly serious expansion of your perception of Reality. And then, for a graduate course, check out Howard Batie’s recently published book “Spiritual Journeys”. Howard is a retired Navy Satellite Communications System Design veteran who switched gears to become a hypnotherapist … because he was interested in healing techniques that actually work. He took Michael Newton’s training in 2005 and then followed his own creative pathway to go beyond MN’s Spirit Realm discoveries. I spent over 10 hours in person with Howard three weeks ago (in Chehalis, WA) and found him to be an honest, sincere and humble pioneer explorer into the unbelievably exciting and awe inspiring Nature of the Universe. Leo! Leo! Leo! STOP STOP STOP whatever you are doing and open your mind to Michael Newton and Howard Batie. What you discover will only ADD to your impressive view of Reality and the human condition. This information has NOTHING to do with religion, and EVERYTHING to do with what is Real … particularly the nonphysical aspects of Reality. Leo, I appreciate your thoughtful expressions about the rarity of Enlightenment. Opening your awareness to the Spirit Realm back story to Life on Earth will blow you away! Human beings have access to information beyond your wildest dreams. Now. NOW! Howard has dedicated himself to empowering others with tools to access otherworldly information directly, personally. “Spiritual Journeys” contains verbatim transcripts of sessions with some of his student/clients within the past year. The information Howard harvested will simply explode your mind, Leo! You will thank me forever for turning you on to this treasure trove of incredible insight into humanity, Earth, the Universe and “God”.

Hi Leo, I gave my presentation on similar topic in which I was standing against the personification of God.I couldn’t possibly convince my audience because I was not quite able to explain the phenomenon of “nothingness”. Now I have more clear vision about it,hope I can convey your message successfully to all now. Thank you a lot.

Hi Leo, this came up in my mind when I was watching this video. Sometimes when I’m getting to know someone, sometimes the question ‘so what do you believe in?’ I lived in central Texas most of my life, so many of the times the answer would be ‘I believe in God.’ But really, what that means most of the time is ‘I go to church on Sundays.’ Because God isn’t something you believe or think about. But its really hard to know what someone else really thinks because of how we are limited in language. You are God whether you know it or not. I like to think that’s the journey we are all on, to come to touch God, the no self, nothingness and to let go of unnecessary bs (belief systems).

My guess is that in Texas (and most other states) when someone says, “I believe in God.” they are more than likely referring to the ancient celestial curmudgeon in a white robe with a long beard and a fairly serious struggle with anger management issues.

BTW, Leo, in general I think in your video you cut Religion way too much slack and benefit of the doubt regarding motives. Particularly re Christianity, it only took a few hundred years for the powers that be to realize that Christianity could be morphed into the ideal crowd control system. Shackle their minds and hearts with guilt and fear, and they become putty in your greedy fingers.

Religion isn’t so much a culprit, its peoples intentions behind it, or their motives as you say. Why are they really identified with a religion. And for most people my age its a cultural thing. I went to church because my parents go to church and their parents went to church. It was part of our life and a way to be “good” person.

I was talking to one of my co-workers, and he lived in a small town, wasn’t wealthy. Every Sunday a bus would come by his home and take him and others kids to church. Every week would be a different church. At one particular church, the pastor told the people there that if they don’t go to his specific church, they would go to hell. I don’t think he was even considered religious at that point, he was promoting himself. Or maybe he did have a clear personal subjective vision of what it was to know God, but didn’t trust others to find it for themselves.

It’s a matter of self expression and everyone is different. Like Bruce Lee said ‘Let no way be way.’

I hope will expand further on “nothingness” – its funny the way Dr Wayne Dyer explained it is with the help of quantum mechanics – how once you reach a certain point you can no longer view a particular phenomena because the measuring instrument you use to measure it, imparts energy and actually changes the thing you are trying to see. Seems like a paradox .. how do you experience nothing?
I suppose the answer is, get rid of everything that is “something” .. lose the ego – attachment to possessions, attachment to identity, attachment to beliefs and feelings – ya … no problem, piece of cake … kind of makes you understand why certain groups demonize western culture and materialism.

It’s hard for me to communicate what I am trying to say because, well, words. But let’s just say I appreciate your videos on “spiritual enlightenment”. I appreciate that you put them up though you are not a “guru”. And that you are blunt, and honest in them. I feel that slowly the world is turning this way. Slowly I am turning this way. I have had a moment of this truth. The smallest, mess with your head, can’t you give me more, why didn’t it last forever, moment. And now I’m hooked.

One question: you say you have had small but powerful experiences that help you to confirm these things. As have I. Would you mind sharing? I ask because I find that when I hear others, they are so similar to my own. They are the myths that weave themselves into religion. But the first whisper from the telephone game is always good to hear.

One comment: I don’t know that I agree with your interpretation of how religion is 99.999% myth devoid of truth. I think there is more of the real retained. I say this because many of the religious people I know have had similar experiences to my own. And because I have studied religion in the search for truth. I never found it there. But others have. For instance, the sensation of no-thing-ness, commonly described as a “prompting from within the void”, by a Mormon(I know, of all?!) friend of mine. In my opinion – these particular religious folks(who self identify as religions, not of the esoteric branch) are more “spiritual” and less religious, but they do not realize it. I cannot deny(and it’s not my place to) that they have had contact with “god”, or “nothingness”, their experience was quite similar to my own, albeit in a rather cursory sense. Perhaps religion does seek truth at times. In a way that might, at this point, even be more accurate than science. Might be verging on spiritual matters to some degree. And I use spiritual in the same non woo-woo sense as you.

Mainstream Mormons (and Mormon leadership) all teach and believe that God occupies a human body of flesh and bone, as does also the resurrected Jesus. Mormons believe that God the Father and Jesus live in the Celestial Kingdom on a planet near a star named Kolob.

Your Mormon friend is a rare anomaly to espouse what you reported … considered by Mormons to be temptings of Satan whose reason to exist is to lead righteous Mormons astray.

Hi Leo
I have been always looking for the answer I got today I have a scientific background and don’t believe in religion, but actually I always thought that there was something commun to religions, and that it couldn’t possibly be a coincidence, the truth of no self. Of course it still does not explain how and why we were originated.. Looking forward to being enlightened.
thanks
LGH

Awesome video. I found myself at about a quarter into it saying aloud, “this is exactly what I have been needing…what I have been waiting for.” I have been on what I call a spiritual journey for some time now, searching for and waiting for answers to my many questions. Being raised as a Christian, I no longer identify myself as religious in any way. Though still believing there is a God, just in a different way than how I have been taught, I have been trying to become more open-minded to religions now that I feel I am on the outside looking in. I have concluded I don’t know it all and I want to not portray to others, especially my Christian identifying partner, that my way of thinking and perceiving is better than his. I just wrote him a long email today saying that I don’t want to judge others for their religiousness or try to press my own understandings onto them, or him. I want to live and let live. I admitted I am not yet satisfied with my current level of ability to do that. I then was drawn to this video sent to my email. Right on time. Exactly on point. I must say thank you. Truly awesome.

I had just spoken with my (Protestant Christian) Preach about the idea that God DNA could be a part of our soul.. He disagreed, and stated that Hindu’s would believe that God is within us.. But that Christianity perceives that we are separate from God.. Able to make our own choices, we must experience a willingness to give ourselves to God and act selflessly..
In acting selflessly, we act with love.. Not from or with nothingness..
Even in the making of this video, you (Leo) believe you are acting in love.. For love is an action, not a feeling..
In the opposite way that We Are Not Our thoughts, we can Be Love, but not by Being Nothing..
Reality check Leo.. I think Nothing is less important than than Love..

whether laying down one’s life to save another, or simply handing a nickel to a homeless person, these are simply acts of love and compassion (emotions).. completely disconnected from any connection or disconnection to any other/greater entity.. emotions rule logic, easy.. finding nothing, not easy.. dig your work!!

Thank you for your videos! You might enjoy listening to “John Hagelin Consciousness 1 & 2” on youtube. He’s a particle physicist who’s talking about how we are all really one consciousness…..I think you’ll dig it!!

Maybe, Leo, what you should do is also point out some of the ways that science actually understands human psychology, too. Eg. the role of the hypothalamus, amygdala in emotions, vs. the pre-frontal cortex. Also, what came to my mind with regard to why selfishness is so ingrained in us, is due to the nature of dna, replication, memes, and how the body and mind are survival machines for the replication of dna, a la Richard Dawkins’ book The Selfish Gene.
Selfishness can be understood by analogies… of course, nothingness is a harder concept… I think I have only gotten a glimpse of it during a psychedelic experience, if you know what I mean.

All that stuff is fine and fun to learn, but none of it is actually YOU and will never lead to finding the real YOU. In fact, it’s going to lead you astray with a false sense of understanding yourself.

Hi Leo. I like your videos.
Don’t you think that a psychedelic experience is a way to jail-break your mind? The experience is not a guarantee to any end but the potential exists to open the third door.
I have not had such an experience in 30-40 years but am in need of a re-boot. This culture has a grip on me and I don’t like it. I AM in hell.
Namaste.

Psychedelics won’t jailbreak your mind. They’ll just give you a cool thrill which will make you think you’ve made progress when in fact you haven’t. The only use I can see from them is if they convince you that this shit is real, and somehow you get motivated to do the long work I want you to do.

I know you touch upon many topics from sex, to enlightment, to money, health, religion,etc. I hope you do a video on why you think the universe exists and our bodies and everything in the world. And then or at the same time who and how you think made all this? Pretty much the who,how,why of the universe. And don’t say the answer is NOTHING. LOL

Great to see yet another very similar journey bro. From interest in pick up to enlightenment. Only an intelegent, intentional, FORCEFUL “nothing” would think of such a amazing journey Yes, I’m come to see what you call nothing or “void” is our creators nature, which is also our nature. A blank, creative, canvas.

What about near death experiences, seeing the tunnel, the light, observing your body from above, meeting dead relatives, etc. No matter what people’s background or religion is, all these experiences are very similar in nature. Could these experiences be classified as enlightenment? What we call soul, is that also nothingness? Do we have a soul?

Really great video! Atheist here with a huge love for science. Fortunately, I have an open mind. I have been thinking about these same things regarding the origin of religions since I started practicing daily meditation and listening to some Deepak Chopra lectures. Thanks for some additional ideas and insights.

I find this very thought provoking. I’d began a journey to gain a better understanding of Self. To now consider the self as nothingness.

I had a very powerful life changing experience a few years ago, an awakening of Self awareness. I think people struggle to bring fundamental change into their lives. I feel open to anything and everything. Its what is potentially available I find so intriguing. Thank you.

There is nothing that really can be said but what you said you said very very well, and im still writing this comment

Its amazing how this awareness in us comes, and then everything seems different (and somehow everything makes sense). Its amazing how when you understand / experience whatever this is directly, then you can access that and it brings a new truth to things. I also found that once I gained this glimpse I understood soo much about myself and many things everywhere. Also interesting how many follow the same path, psychology, self enhancement (Tony Robbins), conciseness (Eckhart, Maharshi etc) and we find ourselves here. The awareness becomes apparent and we realise it was always there and was what we were always drawn too…. etc etc too much talking… too much words.. but thanks for yours.

Interesting Leo! But I’m really getting the sense that you are beginning to make too much about spiritual enlightenment. I’m neither just an atheist nor a religious person, maybe a little bit of both, or just open-minded I’d rather say. I’ve seen most of your videos and think you make really, really good and useful analyses of life. But I’m afraid that this is drifting away a bit. That’s my feeling from a spectators viewpoint anyway. Maybe your reaction to this comment is “this guy just hasn’t got it, he is not yet spiritually enlightened”. But, ironically, that way of thinking would also be kind of dogmatic. Every dogmatic stance will inevitably be constrained and incomplete. So, isn’t it that what everything comes down to in the end is just being open-minded? Since being open-minded, by definition, keeps our minds, senses, feelings, and logic open to everything and nothing at the same time. So, as keen follower, hearing you trenching down in the spiritual enlightenment interpretations of things makes me a bit cautious about future videos.

Well… this will appear like dogma to you, but the case with you is that your awareness is too low to recognize what is being talked about.

The reason I spend so much time talking about enlightenment is because it is the single most powerful tool in your ability to self-actualize. If you get enlightenment down, the doorways to transforming your psyche will burst open. So it’s worth taking very seriously.

I’m not just here spouting philosophy at you guys. This shit will transform your entire life in ways you cannot even imagine.

But the ego doesn’t like hearing such things. What you call “open minded” isn’t nearly open enough. Your mind is 1% open. You’ve got a lot of room to grow. Keep at it!

well leo you arent human ur a kingroo cox first u talking that how to have amazing sex etc self devolopment things and after that u telling that there is no self spiritual englishmnt nd now u said that there is nothing your aree too much confused you think that you need some rest forget about all nd think bout the nature forget bout humanity just look deeep into nature hope u find ur way wat u really looking for and want to show other people dont mind it

Great video Mr. Guran! Awesome job. Thank you for your work and stuff. I had some different thoughts and/or more thoughts about good and evil, and devil stuff which you said in the end, but anyway, good work.

I am following your enlightenment videos and this was the first that really cracked my ego. The weird feelings and trying to resist the thinks that came from your voice where breaking into my ego. The realization of a reality you conceptualize had a good impact on my ego. Love the way “i” can look now from a reasonable point of view of life. See thinks just the way they are and let go of my egocentric way of thinking. Love the point You can’t communicate and think about nothingness without conceptualize nothingness.

When your explanation about that “No Self” can’t be communicated by text was so clear to me because i did the same when i read books that told about it. “i” was not getting the point you are telling here.

What “I” like about your video’s are the face impressions of the video before playing(see what you did there). And i do get your voice much better then any text because “I” have a bit trouble to read with my dyslexia. “I” really appreciate the effort you have taken to conceptualize all this to reasonable understanding concepts that the most of us can understand!!! THANKS and keep the good work!!! I don’t wanted to reply on one of your videos before because it will only be a point out of the ego. Just communicating here, “I” hope you can use the information.

I just don’t understand why you’d have faith in nothing. You can’t have nothing without something, therefor something must exist. …but you’d just say i’m not enlightened. Leo, I think you’re in for a big surprise once you die.

Leo, i’m a huge fan of you and I respect your opinion more than i’m willing to admit. I’ve watched all of your videos. some even multiple times, because you’re concerned with truth more than anything and i look up to that. I don’t care about anything more than truth, so what does it mean to you when I say I don’t agree with what you say in this video. I’m sure you’ll dismiss my opinion, but you have no idea how much i respect your opinion. I’ve actually been thinking about paying you to be my life coach. I look up to you man! but i just don’t agree with you when it comes to this. I wish my words didn’t fall short. Please consider them. I believe I am something and I believe you are something.

Well… what you’ve got going on is beliefs and theories of the monkey mind. You should stay open to the possibility that your beliefs are illusory.

You are certainly far from enlightenment

Keep your mind open and do some more exploring. Who are you? Really! Look into the matter! Who the fuck are you? Stop theorizing and look for yourself! Notice that anything you identify as yourself is just another perception, not the perciever you believe you are. Notice that right now in your awareness your experience terminates into nowhere, not you! Nothing perceived can be called you because it’s always contingent and changing. So then… Who the fuck are you? Really!

Can you start to get a sense that actually “you” cannot be found in direct experience? Might that point to the possibility that you are actually not a thing? Like… nothing. Seriously! Look! I’m not bullshitting here.

Also notice how scared you are to really look. What might that suggest? Hmmmmmmm…

How can you have a perception without a perceiver? Don’t they create each-other? I guess i’m just a sucker for what i’ve read about near death experiences and the idea that your experience doesn’t terminate into nowhere, but will be reviewed in the afterlife. All these people talking about their whole life flashing before their eyes and being able to learn lessons from their experiences. All these people saying that everyone has an individual soul and that we’re here to grow.

right Ninos and Craig,
above when Leo mentioned the my Preacher is acting from a position of evil, it made things a little clearer.. haters gonna hate.. the greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing people he didn’t exist.. and if you cant say something good, say “nothing”.. obviously, we all like Leo’s motivational work and tips for better relationships and success.. but this “nothing thing” throws it in the can.. Obviously, this is a call to think for yourself.. take a stand in your life.. pointing the finger of blame wont cut it, so be responsible for your own thoughts.. maybe Leo has acted a bit hastily in expounding on a subject he only just discovered.. we can forgive that.. let’s see what next month brings, shall we??

Don’t misunderstand what I meant by the word evil. I use it in the original sense: one who refuses to see the truth in lieu of his ego. That is what evil really means. That’s what the Devil is. The Devil is not a man with a pitchfork and hooves. The Devil is you! Because you refuse to submit to the light of truth and insist on being dogmatic and egotistical. See how that works? Religion is actually Devil’s work under proper interpretation. See how brilliant the Devil is? He calls others Devils first so that he appears a saint.

It’s ironic that the preachers are some the greatest Devils out there. A Devil in sheep’s clothing! How backwards religion has come is remarkable. You’ll start to appreciate the irony if you do a bit of this work. In the meantime, don’t let my words throw you off.

I wish I could let it go, but there’s nobody who’s made me question my beliefs more than you Leo! I understand that you might think ego is limiting, but to me it just seems like you don’t value your our uniqueness. I’m sure there’s a positive and negative way to look at “ego” …but it seems like you’re saying there’s something wrong in acknowledging my uniqueness in the world and that there’s something wrong in knowing myself as a miracle of the Universe. Earlier when I said “you can’t have nothing without something” …I’m wondering, do you see any truth in that statement?

Nice Craig, “actually” Leo has helped you and me a lot.. because Nothing causes you to truly stand up more, than something you know is not right.. in this case, I always had a little trouble sharing the spotlight with God.. I am getting the impression that the “nothing” crowd might too.. but this has brought me to the new belief that God may just be a cross between mother nature, and father time.. we can say God knows all because everything exists within God, so God contains all knowledge.. God is everywhere, if God is everything (all nature).. as for the immaculate conception, it’s almost irrelevant if you are God.. the truth is stranger than fiction, and so all is possible.. God is a state of mind, a faith.. God is.. Hell on the other hand is your reptile brains’ warnings.. God exists in everything.. But your connection (spirit) can only tap it with a modem (faith).. We live simultaneously in at least two worlds.. The one we see, and the one we believe we believe.. To say otherwise is Nothing short of selfish..

Hehe… Good, look at that ego go through its death throes. Squirming like an eel to preserve the fiction. Can’t you feel how wrong it is what your mind is doing? Can’t you feel how dishonest you are with yourself?

YOU DO NOT EXIST!

Your beliefs about this are not important. Beliefs are just beliefs. What we’re talking about is an objective fact which your present awareness is insufficient to see. It’s a quantum leap in consciousness from where you are now to Truth with a capital T. You’re not gonna think or argue your way out. That is just more self-lies.

The solution here is not to argue or swap beliefs. I’m not telling you to believe me. The solution is to raise your awareness sufficiently to see that you do not exist.

In the meantime, The Voice will come up with 1001 excuses and rationalizations for why Leo is wrong.

God damn it Leo! I can feel how wrong it is what my mind is doing. I don’t buy into it 100% yet, but I must be on the right track, because I can’t disagree with you anymore. I’m gonna go back and watch all these spiritual enlightenment videos yet again. All I should say is THANKS

It’s an hour long video about “nothing”? The irony. If you seek God you will find him. Seems like you’ve been trying to find your self, and found yourself (more irony).

Question:

Did you read the entire bible with an open mind and exercise its practices? If so then I will consider your theory with more seriousness. If not, consider trying it since Jesus changed the freakin calendar (BC, AD)

By the way this might be hard to believe. I’m Christian but…..I’m actually not perfect……yet at least lol. Last parts a joke much love bro

The Bible? The Bible is filled with ideas. More ideas don’t help in this matter.

Jesus didn’t change the calendar. Other people created it. What Jesus did or did not do is hearsay at best and falsehood at worst. I’ve met real-life people who may well be more enlightened than Jesus or the Buddha, so there’s no need to go through 2000 years of hearsay and story-telling. When you speak with them, they clearly tell you to seek the answers directly in first-hand experience. Nothing else will ever suffice.

Every belief, any belief, is NOT the Truth and never can be. Do you grasp the significance of this statement? Really think it through. I’m not kidding. There are no exceptions! That means everything you believe is not the Truth. Not even close!

There are no true religious people. Religion is the holding of beliefs. These beliefs are NEVER the Truth, even if some of them point to the Truth, they are still a infinite degree apart.

The issues you speak of have nothing to do with knowing existential Truth, which is what Nothingness is. You could be a serial killer AND know the Truth. They are unrelated. In the same way that you can understand calculus and still beat your wife. But interestingly, knowing the Truth will make you act more lovingly and “morally” towards other people because you realize that on the existential level, you are not separate from them.

Knowing the Truth also makes you less likely to engage in neurotic tendencies such as worrying about whether people think you’re good looking.

Hi again
Thank you for your attention
I want to know the feeling of a man who knows the truth and lives in this manner of being nothing, about being healthy, about learning communication skills, about having an amazing sex Why is it important for a NOTHINGNESS to pay attention to his health ?! Why is it important to live longer if we are from immortal nothingness and we’re going to last forever?! Why is it important to work hard and start a business to gain money?!
Thanks

I enjoyed this, Leo. I hope you continue to question everything, even your own dogmatism. Please do not stop your search for The Truth about religion or consider it finished. I hope to hear how you’ve grown in 10 or more years. Consider the concept of paradox and read a little more Zen. Then think a little more about what Jesus said, and what Einstein said about God. Read C.S. Lewis’ chapter on how he converted from atheism, and some Thomas Merton before listening critically to a little Howard Stern. You are still a young fundamentalist, but you are in many ways on the right track. Warm regards from a 61 year old fellow Truthseeker who struggles with and tries to not be too, ah… dogmatic. S.P.

Hey Leo, thank you for the video. And just to mention with your other videos I started to feel that my mind is changing, I started to see the different perspectives of things, thank you for that. Im am a muslim (as I thought I am since Im a kid) and this faith in my God was filling my heart from time to time and gave me some answers about the world but since my mind is openning up there are some quiestions that are not being answered by my religion. Your video is interesting but I was waiting for explanation from where everything had appeared. You are saying from nothing, then how “nothing” decided it to appear, from where all this shapes, elements, structure, sistem. Why the planets are round, why the water is liquid, why there is a man and woman, why only people are the most intelligent or the most stupid creatures on earth. From where materials, sounds and all these rules and ideas that every existing thing is following? This all must be a work of a Huge Intellect and if you say its all from nothing, then Intellectual nothing becomes something?

From my ‘enlightened’ perspective, the nothingness has an absolute nature. What we see is created from that nothingness. To question “why” is like God questioning himself – wouldn’t get him very far would it? He would be chasing himself, trying to find himself. Does God ask, “why do I exist”? Does He inquire about his own existence? For a season he might’ve. But he most definitely realized that he always excited and that his nature was a blank canvas aka nothingness. Just my 2 cents. Words point. They are not truth.

Kevin, I know truth cannot be told as words are coming from the mind. But still my dogmatic mind, doesnt want to put me and God on same level, He might not ask “why?”, but I do, otherwise, why we have given the ability of asking questions? Even this Web site does, btw who knows.. maybe lemons are not even yellow

The WHY question is one of the egoic mind. Why’s, meanings, and purposes don’t exist. There is a reality. It is whatever it is. And nothing more should be said of it. This may seem like a cop-out, but actually is a very profound notion. To understand it, you have to become enlightened. Then all your questions about God and Whys will fall away. So the problem here is not the explanation but one’s insufficient degree of consciousness.

Ditch your faith, pursue an increase in consciousness, and all the things you now have faith in will become irrelevant because you will have True Faith: which is the being of reality itself. YOU ARE IT! You are the thing your faith is pointing to. Being has no doubt. It needs no belief. And it is your true nature if you’ll allow yourself to let go of all your beliefs and personal identity, you will see the thing you believe is “God”. And it will be far more profound and powerful and unorthodox than you’ve ever believed possible. It will be Absolute Nothingness, but this isn’t anything you can possibly imagine. Anything you imagine is something, not Nothing. See how tricky it is?

As I understood, religion is a communicated, which means wrong interpretation of one truth, but for me, considering your perspective again, it’s an escape from truth, means people create religion and faith just because of their egoistic mind – they dont want to be nothing, believing that their life is part of great idea and purpose? I might sound too psycho but now Im on the edge…I feel my mind breaks and my fingers on toes and hands are numb I cannot stop asking questions yet, maybe once I will get enlightened I will, but all Im greatfull for, is whatever I will discover that will be my own land. And if nothing is NO THING…then I agree, its something bigger then a thing. Thank you for reply

Hey Leo,
I’m ethnically persian, actually I’m iranian. I’ve been literally brought up with all these amazing literature. Poets like Saadi, Molavi, Attar, Shams,…(don’t know if you know them. But their poems can help you in your understanding,…It’s very rich) or the story of mansur hallaj. He said, he was God, they didn’t understand him, so they killed him.

I already did understand all these concepts wholeheartedly. I really held these ideas with myself. But I’ve never actually tried this. I’ve never thought it would be plausible. It seriously sounds anti mainstream, anti real life. You need to be completely detached from the material world. It’s kinda dangerous.

I agree with your definition of good. But I think just like how dark is simply lack of light’s existence and it doesn’t exist, bad is also the lack of good’s existence. I think bad doesn’t exist.

You said don’t hold any religious beliefs. Sounds very vague to me. What kind of beliefs? can you give me some example?
Also do you thinking holding religious beliefs is bad, even if you rationalize them? For instance, In my religion, drinking is forbidden. I mean it can be unhealthy, bad and all. I’ve never drank in my entire life. This belief is rationalized in my mind. So how can holding it be bad in any sort of way?

Also you are really baffling me. In this video you are saying don’t hod any beliefs. In another video of yours(How to stop caring about what other people think) You said, you should try and make your belief and value system, your own life philosophy. That’s the only way you would feel fulfilled and satisfied. These two ideas are very contradictory.
How can I be enlightened but not lose my life on earth to it? How can being enlightened work in parallel with that mindset? It’s like they don’t go in one sentence!

To me, once you become free (enlightened) you can create YOUR own life philosophy of your choosing, or not. I’ll admit it has its temporary challenges, but playing both sides is key. Gotta use our minds but prevent our minds from using us.

I was talking to my friend about this, she told me about an idea she has heard about the topic:

That you shouldn’t be ideologistic, but idealistic.

She defined ideologistic as a person who sees things as bad or good. But idealistic as someone who just has these ideas about life but doesn’t really judge things…

But this is also confusing. You ditch your beliefs, build values for yourself. And then sooner than later, you’ll find yourself judging things.(Since you still have ego). Then again you ditch your beliefs,… And it goes on and on. You’ll be in a loop.(Maybe with lesser ego each time)

Maybe it means that you gotta make values for yourself but never cling on to it, constantly challenge your ideas and change it…

Also there is another question that I have.

When we want something from life, whether it’s better result with studying, work, relationships or anything else from life, It’s our ego asking us these things?

Leo, I just watched “Spirituality vs Religion” Video. And I thought it was better to comment on the last video with the same topic.

When you know the truth, you’ll become silent. Then how come the prophets or a few others actually talk about it?

Also when you spoke the truth, they’ll kill you! They killed Mansur hallaj for the very same reason. If the prophets really talked about the truth in the direct approach(that God is nothing, that God is us), they would’ve been killed. Don’t you think?

You say that the prophets did talk about the truth but since the truth is not communicable, when you try to put truth into language, the thing that people will derive from it will be beliefs. So here is where my understanding differs from you:

I was talking to a friend, she said that the plate of the prophets were really big. That they could handle the truth a lot more than others. So they actually didn’t talk about the truth directly, they simplified it… so that others could also pick a little from the truth. (Since not everyone can handle the truth)

But the plate of others like Mansur hallaj was smaller. He couldn’t handle the truth. The truth literally slipped out of his plate, So he shouted it. And they killed him.

I really think you are wrong about this qualia thing. I come at human nature from an evolutionary perspective and (without wasting a lot of your time) have put a ton of thought into these questions. I really see you as a kindred intellect, but from an evolutionary perspective qualia is little more than a biological phenomenon.

Hi leo i’m a religious person in a religious family& the only & prominent reason of mine to be religious is that i’ve seen alot of gangster cruel dictator &criminal people that are so satisfied with their life.they do damages,they hurt,they kill so what about the consequence .you mean that they are allowed to do anything they want but religion believe that we have another world to punish them.i just believe this part of religion cause i cant see other people.please guide me if you think i’m wrong.

Hey Leo I want to first of all thank you for putting me on the right path with my life through teaching me meditation! Second I want to return the kind act to you and anybody else who seeks spiritual enlightenment! Acharya Shree is my mentor and helping me achieve the enlightenment. I felt like I needed to share this with everyone because there are not many master left on earth, and masters that speak English Maybe you have come across this guy? Thats okay a couple million haven’t and may want more knowledge looking at the comments! Here you go enjoy my friends!

CRAIG CLAYTON.
I am surprised that you are wavering on your stance. Me and you think very much alike. I wonder what you came up with. Please email me private I want to discuss. I am very interested. [email address removed]

Why not label it ‘wholeness’ or ‘fullness’? Also why encourage people to drop their religious beliefs? They are pointing to the same truth as yours. Lest you believe in two truths. I would imagine suicidal tendency comes from something. Lack of nothing maybe? Then it would be more truthful to say lack of fullness. Or hell, just “something.”

Because beliefs are the key thing that keeps you unenlightened. All beliefs must be dropped. They are fictions! The fact that people want to cling to them so badly is precisely why beliefs must go. To become enlightened, you must enter a state of complete not-knowing.

I get it. We create from nothingness, and our nature is what it is. But the very fact that I have a child or the feelings we have when faced with the reality of death is proof of something, namely love.

Leo, thank you for your opinion, i really appreciate them, you’re amazing. I’m a new subscriber to your web and I just followed your videos for a few days and they have impacted me a lot, and to let you know, I’m a Christian, just to let you know so that you can understand me better. So Leo, I just want to have your point of view about possessions by evil spirits, demons – it’s what they call it – ’cause currently i think it’s real, it happens, my friend saw them with their eyes, and the possessed people was like, her eyes turned black, and she’s struggling to not let the demon possess her, and also i saw some live recordings related to this. Do you think this is real ? Thank you in advance Leo, I’ll appreciate any opinion you’ll offer.

@Leo I enjoy your videos… I digest the meat a discard the bones. When you mentioned certain ancient cultures theology you failed to mention African Traditional Religions (Ausaurians and Dogons)– where it all started.

Thousands of years before Rome, civilizations on the Nile held similar beliefs — with one main difference, they believed in the duality of our existence. We are both physical and spiritual beings…we are living in a material world made manifest via thought.

We are spiritual beings having a very real human experience. The paradox of this paradigm is that via our duality we live both in time and out of time. One great ancient book on this subject is called the Metu Neter; a book based on Ancient Kemet (Egypt/Sudan).

Hi, I am enjoying watching your videos and I have seemed to recognize experiencing enlightenment, in a sense, throughout my life. I am not religious but I have a question. Are spiritual beings or ghosts real or figments of imagination? I am wondering because in my own experiences it seemed that I and others with me sensed these beings. Just thinking about this is confusing me.

I have compassion for you. I didn’t watch it only few mins. I know your view about religion. So no need to waste my time on that although I like your videos in general. I wish you to see the truth one day
Regards

Hi Leo,
I have a question, i believe i’d gain a lot if i got your opinion. I’m a strong christian who tries to be opened minded, i want to know if you think there is a difference between feeling the ‘presence of god’, the ‘power of the present moment’ and ‘being with nothingness’ (for lack of a better description), would really appreciate your thoughts, cheers.

Do try to understand what “God” actually points to: the dissolution of the boundary between self and not-self, or in other words, reality exactly as it is. But this is not the way most Christians these days understand God. A “feeling” of God is no good. That’s an egotistical thing mostly. What you need to do is destroy the boundary between “you” and other. This cannot be done by faith or belief. It has to be done for real. You actually have to come to a high consciousness realization that there is no you in existence in the first place. Then what happens is “you” become God/reality/Christ/Buddha/Nothingness/Truth/whatever you wanna call it. The labels are completely meaningless. The only thing that matters is if the YOU illusion is present or not present. The Devil is the illusion of you. You literally are the Devil. The Devil is false but will deny his falseness to the bitter end because he doesn’t want to admit that he is actually God. This is the Devil’s arrogance. Now it’s your job, being the Devil you are, to undo yourself and merge with God. The question is, will you have wisdom to go against every fiber of your Devilish nature and actually do this? Not just talk about it, not just believe in it, but actually do it!

Now be very careful here… Any concepts or ideas or images you have of “merging with God” are certainly false and the work of the Devil. Those images keep you from actually merging with God.

So what are you to do? Well… the first step is to admit to yourself that you could in fact be the Devil. Without that, you’ve got no chance because you don’t even have enough awareness to see the deep mess you’re in.

Hey Leo, first of all thanks for the quick reply. Super interesting, thanks for explaining it in a christian way, it makes sense and matches up to a lot of scripture. One in particular stood out for me; ‘do not conform to the things of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind’, the ‘YOU illusion’ i have is certainly part of ‘this world’.

Furthermore, i just have 1 more question, Every Christian I’ve talked to believes ‘god’ is ‘love’. (like the 2 are the same) my question is; in your opinion do you believe love is just an emotion or is there something profound about it?
cheers again.

Love is Truth. When the boundary between you and other is removed, when falseness is dismissed, what remains is unconditional love for the beauty of reality. It’s a love for the True Self. Think of it as reality making love to itself. All of reality becomes magical again, like when you were a child. This is what is called God’s love. It’s really your love. Because you are the entire universe interacting with itself. And it is perfect. Only the false ego doesn’t see it. Which is why the false ego has to go.

What about shamanism? It is generally agreed that shamanism originated among hunting-and-gathering cultures, and there are cave paintings of shamanistic rituals found that date back to the paleolithic period. Shamanism does have direct experience at its core. ‘the truth of no self’ ,as you name it, is called ‘ego death’ in Jungian psychology. And it was mass spread through hallucinogenic plants. Not by language, because it is as you said unspeakable, but by nature itself.

There was some use of hallucinogenics, but it was mixed with all sorts of mystical, pre-rational dogmas. So you might say it was a very very crude, early stage towards enlightenment which was then perfected by the major religions.

I just wanted to ask you if you have really looked into science much? Have you educated yourself on science the other aspect? Like really tried on science? It’s seems people like to talk about what suits their own agenda.

I studied aerospace engineering and epistemology in college, completing 2 years of calculus, 2 years of physics and chemistry. I also studied anthropology, logic, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science. I read books on evolution, physics, astrology, and logic. I spent 4 years during college thinking deeply about philosophy and science and how the two intersect. I got straight-As in college with the exception of linear algebra and thermodynamics, where I got 2 B+’s. After college I studied lectures on quantum mechanics, relativity, mathematics, astronomy, biology, philosophy, evolution, and dark matter and dark energy.

How about you?

Do you understand what science is? Do you understand what the limitations of science are?

How many years have you spent studying epistemology?

How many years have you spent meditating or doing self-inquiry?

How many years have you studied developmental psychology?

How many enlightened individuals have you met in person and talked to?

Ahahaha your silly carm down, I was merely asking a question. No need to be defensive. I very much like your videos. As to your questions, I could come up with some interesting lies to tell you about what I’ve studied. The truth is I am 16 years old studying psychology. Good for you mate. I just wanted to be sure that your a knowledgeable guy. I like psychology, science, biology. I want to go university in a few years. I live in England your videos help me thank you!

I think you should not speak about Christianity or Jesus Christ AT ALL because, obviously, you have not studied it or Him very deeply. You’re VERY ignorant of the world’s comparative religions, so you ought not even comment on them.

Leo I’ve watched most of your videos and you do great work. But I’m afraid she is right. Your mind is not as open to the truth as much as you think and claim. You clearly resist our higher authority in an attempt to establish your own rule. And we all do this at some level but you Leo…you know exactly what your doing.

I’m happy I saw this video. This clarifies the concept of separation between God and us, which is that there is a no separation. I went from being a Christian, to Buddhist, to an Atheist for a certain amount of time. And I always had this idea but my ego made me lose my way there. Thank you for this, it’s very eye opening and motivating.

Just keep in mind that until you’ve experienced enlightenment on the nature of existence, you actually have no clue what “God” points to. All ideas about “God” are wrong. All beliefs are wrong. All thoughts are wrong. You cannot think your way there. Any idea you have of “Absolute Nothing” is wrong.

Depends on what you mean by noumena. It’s best to avoid such extravagant labels. All these labels do is confuse you. You will need to have a direct conscious experience of it before it means anything to you.

I live in Puerto Rico, and in these last few months I have being thinking about these subjects and a lot more that you talk about. And It is rare to me that someone can think like I think. I have been seeing your videos and it is like you were me in five years, because sharing what I can understand, what I believe, what is the truth, it is something I really wanted. But is not only because of that, it is because all the way you think is the way I have being thinking.And this video specifically on is wholly is the way I have being thinking about religion this past weeks.

What about morality? You briefly mention good and evil in association with enlightenment (good being ‘nothing’, evil being the ‘ego,’ or rather ‘something.’)

But I’m not sure you explored religions purpose in creating law and order in any given society. Say hypothetically that we lived in a world where everyone was enlightened, how would we create a society to stop the ego from taking people over again?

It may sound far fetched and absurd but I’m considering the implications mainstream enlightenment could have on society. That is, indeed, if it can be made mainstream because it is so incommunicable.

I see what you mean about dogma being flawed, but is morality not entirely subjective? You even have a video explaining the lack of objectivity in the words “good vs evil.” Thus, what are your grounds for claiming that a self-actualised person is “moral?”

If morality is a subjective belief then it cannot possibly be associated with enlightenment, which is freedom from belief and unity with the ultimate truth of being.

Furthermore, if this truth is incommunicable, then there must be an obstacle preventing it from being communicated, i.e. a deceptive low-consciousness society. Is that obstacle “evil,” or is truth entirely neutral?

True morality is not a function of the mind. It is not a doctrine or belief system or philosophy or set of rules.

The deepest morality is simply universal love/compassion, which is identical to enlightenment. The only reason anyone is “immoral” is because they are identified with their body/mind and belief there is a boundary between self and other, which is a mental fiction.

Universal love cannot be encapsulated in a system of rules. You have to be enlightened to live and breathe it.

Truth is entirely loving and “good”. Which is why religions preach universal love but always fail to deliver (unless you first get enlightened through your religion).

Yes, Enlightenment transcends the mind but surely it requires it to begin with. It must require “faith,” “belief” or any other conceptual framework you’d like to call it in order to be attained – or else how would we know about it in the first place?

For example, approximately a year ago I was introduced to enlightenment on your website. That could never have happened without some form of conceptual communication, i.e. you telling me about it in your video.

So not only did I need the initial knowledge, (provided by you), I then needed FAITH that it was going to lead to happiness in order to pursue it. I needed to believe that the works of Ralston and Shinzen Young were pointing to an unseen truth or I would’ve given up long ago.

I’m not enlightened, so perhaps I’m not worthy of making such a claim. But what deeply troubles me is that it seems impossible to attain unless you have the ‘intention’ to pursue it, which must originate in the mind. Am I wrong? Please, enlighten me!

ok i have so many questions for you leo
then why are we here? to find the true nothingness in ourself ? thats it? thats the whole purpose??
and what would happen to the persons who cant find the nothingness in themselves and die. what happens next? they reach the nothingness by dying? what is the difference between people who have done horrible things during their life here,and those who have never hurt anybody?every one gets to go to this “heaven” as you said? that doesnt make sense. dont get me wrong i’m open to different ideas.its just your video raises more question than it answers.

No, there is no point and no meaning. Meaning is a very limited concept. Without a self, all meaning is transcended. Existence is WAY more powerful and profound than meaning.

The thing you’re struggling with is that you’re looking for some kind of human-level law of justice or fairness, heaven vs hell, right vs wrong, good vs evil. This is ridiculous at the level of existence. Existence simply exists. The end. Everything is equal. The saint is no better than the sinner. Can you imagine a saint who believes he’s better than a sinner? No! The saint is a saint exactly because he is conscious of the fact that everything is equal. This is the only thing that can allow him to have a saintly attitude. This is called unconditional love. Existence loves all of itself. There are no “bad” parts to existence, only an ego believes in bad parts.

check out “The Last Reformation” on youtube. I was very impressed by the documentary, it shows real content that has been happening over the last few years. You can actually go out there and try it for yourself

I feel so bad for all of you. Being so selfish thinking you are your own god. This is completely sad because people that think this way end up with emptiness. Many of you with depression and suicidal thoughts. Trying to be your own creators. You might like critical thinking and be as smart as you can. You might talk about religion but none of you have a relationship with the only one that can reddened your life for eternity. Yes there is a Supreme Being and his name is God. Jesus came to save people like you, unbelievers that doubt everything and become empty souls. Leo you wish to be God but an finite mind cannot fit on infinitive mind. You are searching for your own way of living and your own truth, but there is really, 1 real truth. You are lacking faith and faith cannot be seen. It is something deep that can be feel. I pray that all or you find the real truth and be great thinkers for the real cause in life that is God and the sacrifice of Jesus in the cross. Read the bible is the most accurate books of all times. Even has the future written down lol

Jenniffer-I was brought up through the Christian paradigm and have studied all aspects of theology and will tell you, you’re opinion about what they are doing is incorrect. They have evolved beyond the prison of religion and have found precisely what religions describe. Christ/God likeness.

Hey Leo, I know you tell us not to try to over-rationalize these notions and concepts too much and to just experience them first hand, but I feel kind of stuck on a point and hope that maybe you may be able to knock something loose in my mind to help me be more open minded. Even though I haven’t gotten to the point of experiencing it first hand, I’m not really having difficulty accepting the truth of “no self” – but I’m having lots of trouble accepting the notion that pure awareness and perception exist independently of ANY perceiver. The idea of PURE perception and pure awareness perceiving itself does not make a whole lot of sense to me. I know its something I have to experience to understand but its giving me lots of trouble.

In response to: the deepest morality is simply universal love/compassion, which is identical to enlightenment. I AGREE based on actual experience–not that we need agree. I have removed the label called Christian after much study of the Bible through a lens called the Aramaic language. My Christian beliefs were made up of Western culture and 2000 years of humanity. My direct experience of love is what I call my Walmart story. For 15 minutes straight from the time I got out of my car until the time I got back to my car was the dominant thought, “You are the LOVE of HIM”. Every person I saw was a reciprocal love and it did NOT matter what they looked like, what they wore, their nationality, what they did for a living, nothing mattered. All that mattered was that they were loved. As a christian one could say HIM is God, but that is only MY opinion. I don’t think the HIM part mattered. What matters is LOVE!

I just enjoyed a very entertaining Wild Ride Around the Universe by reading all three of Garnet Schulhauser’s books. He was a buttoned-down corporate attorney in Calgary minding his own business, when suddenly a homeless bum accosted him on the sidewalk. Turned out to be an apparition of his Spirit Guide, Albert, who informed Garnet that he had been selected to receive a series of multidimensional guided astral tours of Reality and to then write books about his experiences, insights and teachings for all of humanity.

I posted earlier on this thread about Michael Newton’s books re Life Between Lives. Much of the MN info was corroborated by Albert and Garnet, plus lots of new information about life after death on the Spirit Side.

I recommend to everyone to check out Garnet’s books. Read them in publication order (2012, 2015, 2016). A fourth book is scheduled for Jan 1, 2018.

I much prefer Albert’s version of Reality over the Eastern Religion concept of eventually dissolving back into Source and Nothingness. At the end of the day, what if the God/Source is endlessly entertaining itself via the amazing behaviors that incarnated souls come up with when we incarnate as limited, clueless actors on this Holodeck aka Pale Blue Dot. Just as parents get a charge out of watching their babies discover the world around them, maybe God/Source is similarly delighted with the antics of all of our human being soap operas … traveling under the illusion of separateness from Source and from each other.

Teaser 1: During an astral trip to the Hall of Akashic Records, Garnet got a replay of 17 year old Jesus’ marriage to Mary Magdalene. They had kids. Mother Mary was not a virgin, and had other kids in addition to Jesus.

Teaser 2: There were humans on Earth 65 million years ago … living with the dinosaurs in fear of becoming T-rex lunch. These humans disappeared when the Yucatan Asteroid wiped out most life on Earth.

Teaser 3: Albert escorted Garnet to meet Hitler and Jesus sitting on a bench together. Read the book to discover what Hitler’s holocaust victims did to him when they met on the Spirit Side.

Teaser 4: Garnet’s writing and use of English is impeccably eloquent and a very flowing read. Turns out that Garnet has had help from a writing coach. Read the books to discover who his coach is.

The reader gets to decide if Garnet is telling the truth about his Wild Ride with his Spirit Guide, or if he made it all up, or his Spirit Guide made it all up . . . or . . . drum roll . . . maybe Garnet is telling the Truth and giving us clueless humans a giant glimpse into the Nature of Reality and our Incredible Universe!

Just google Garnet Schulhauser to find his website and book info. He has been interviewed over 100 times on internet/tv/radio.

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